Chavez Propped Up Cuba, 'Father' Figure Fidel Castro

Chavez Propped Up Cuba, 'Father' Figure Fidel Castro

Tuesday, 05 Mar 2013 07:11 PM

By Bill Hoffmann



From the moment Hugo Chavez assumed the presidency in Venezuela, he

formed a very close bond with Cuban President Fidel Castro — one that

boosted Cuba's economy through trade, advanced its health care system

and bolstered its military might.



"Venezuela is traveling towards the same sea as the Cuban people, a sea

of happiness and of real social justice and peace," Chávez said during a

visit to Havana in 1999, the same year he rose to power.



One of the first major ties between the two countries came in 2000, when

the two presidents inked an agreement under which Venezuela sent 50,000

barrels of oil per day to Cuba at a heavy discount. The shipment was

nearly doubled by 2005.



In exchange, Cuba sent thousands of specialists in the fields of

education, the arts, sports and medicine to Venezuela.



In 2005, the two countries hammered out a contract to bring tens of

thousands of health care workers, including doctors and nurses, to

Venezuela and establish them in brand-new health care centers.



Chávez and Castro signed a declaration ripping the Free Trade Area of

the Americas, a program supported by the United States as an "expression

of a hunger to dominate the region."



Cuba also helped Venezuela free itself from U.S. influences on its

military by helping train its soliders in guerrilla warfare and

counterinsurgency.



In 2007, Chávez signed an agreement with Cuba to embark on a series of

technical projects, including the construction of an underwater fiber

optics cable.



Venezuelan and Cuban scientists also worked together to improve their

countries' food production — spearheading a research project to improve

the growing of rice.



Last summer, as The New York Times reported, Chavez announced an

agreement with Cuba to create a factory to produce Coppelia ice cream,

famous in Cuba for its tropical flavors.



Washington has kept a weary eye on the ongoing cooperation between

Venezuela and Cuba with the idea they are trying to dominate the

Caribbean economically and militarily. And both sides have fired verbal

shots.



President George W. Bush's Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice slammed

Cuba as an "outpost of tyranny.'' She labeled Chavez a "negative force''

in Latin America.



Chávez called Bush's diplomatic efforts "a false democracy of the elite.''



The friendship between Venezuela and Cuba long predates Castro.

Diplomatic ties between the two powers were first established in 1902.

In 1913, they agreed to an extradition treaty.



The bond between the two men was often described as a father-son

relationship — with Castro was seen as a father figure to Chavez.



"Fidel to me is a father, a comrade, a master of perfect strategy,"

Chavez said in 2005.



http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/chavez-cuba-fidel-castro/2013/03/05/id/493300